Suffolk's first site for delivering Covid-19 vaccinations is to be ready in less than two weeks time, it has been confirmed – with Gainsborough Sports Centre in Ipswich understood to be the first choice, with a site near Hadleigh likely to follow.

Data presented to Suffolk's council, health and police leaders on Friday morning revealed that the East of England is to take delivery of 9.8million vaccines, although the specific numbers for Suffolk and the timeframe for rollout have not yet been given.

During the Suffolk Public Sector Leaders meeting on Friday afternoon, deputy chief constable Rachel Kearton, who has been chairing the strategic recovery group for the Covid-19 response, confirmed the first site for vaccinations would be ready for December 1.

"We are looking to have the first site established within the first week of December," she said. "To put that into context, it doesn't mean it will go live, it means it will be established and ready to receive vaccines and for those to be delivered via the nationally-agreed prioritisation for those most in need once the vaccines have been received."

Ipswich Borough Council has confirmed that the NHS has approached it to use Gainsborough Sports Centre as the hub for the first vaccinations.

"Ipswich Borough Council are in discussions with our local NHS partners about where they will undertake coronavirus vaccinations in town," a spokesman from the borough council said.

"The NHS have requested to use Gainsborough Sports Centre.

"We are considering this request and no final decision has yet been made.

"We recognise that we must all pull together to help deliver the vaccination programme locally as swiftly and as safely as possible."

Dr Padmanabhan Badrinath, a public health consultant with the county council, said the vaccinations will be delivered in three ways.

Each region will have a number of fixed vaccination centres, such as the Gainsborough Sports Centre one if approved, to offer jabs to high numbers of people in one area.

Then mobile mass vaccination sites will be set up on a temporary basis in harder to reach communities or areas which have larger concentrations of high risk individuals.

Finally, a roving service will visit vulnerable people in their homes, but will only be used in a minority of cases as it is highly resource-intensive.

Figures for the numbers of vaccines being delivered to Suffolk have not yet been confirmed, but the county council's public health team confirmed it would be in line with the phased targeting of priority groups, such as care home residents and frontline NHS workers.

The Government must license the vaccines for production and distribution, and then local authorities will be given firm information on those deliveries.

It is understood those vaccines will be across a range of the providers the Government has placed orders with, such as the Pfizer/BioNTech jab and Moderna, and Dr Badrinath said it was likely around 10m vaccines nationally would be delivered before Christmas.

He said: "The whole thing is new so there are huge logistics to be done.

"There will be three ways of delivering this vaccine – the fixed centres, mobile centres and roving people going into people's homes if needed. GPs are also playing a key role in rolling out these vaccines."

Meanwhile, Suffolk is in line to get 75,000 rapid tests per week in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

The lateral flow tests give a result within 10-30 minutes for people not displaying symptoms, and earlier this week were offered to 67 areas in England for mass testing known as Operation Moonshot.

As Suffolk is one of the counties with the lowest numbers of cases in the country it was not announced in that phase, but public health chiefs in the county have confirmed authorities not on that list have been offered the tests at their discretion.

In Suffolk, rapid tests totalling around 10% of the county's population will be offered each week – around 75,000 tests weekly.

Richard Cracknell, co-ordinator of Public Health Suffolk's local outbreak control plan, said: "These test kits provide a rapid turnaround without the need for a laboratory.

"This is a new technology and our team are working closely, and looking at the evidence to make sure the tests are used in the most beneficial way for Suffolk."

The public health team said it would need to request those kits, which can be delivered within 48 hours of the order being placed, and will be delivered to specific locations identified for testing.

A county council spokeswoman said the plan was for them to be available "as soon as possible" with priority areas being worked up and signed off by public health chiefs.

The tests should also help reduce the length of time for self-isolating in instances where people are isolating as a precaution.

Dr Padmanabhan Badrinath, public health consultant in Suffolk, said: "If people come into contact they need to isolate for 14 days.

"That has an impact on the frontline workers at hospitals or police, so the Government is thinking of something called test and release, so that people can be tested with a lateral flow test once, maybe once more after seven days and we can release them so they don't have to keep isolating.

"The science is in a very very early stage but that will come on very quickly and as soon as this has come in we will look at this for Suffolk."

Elsewhere, local contact tracing rates are at 87% according to latest figures, with work to isolate individuals and contact those they have come into contact with beginning less than 24 hours after a positive test.